


Fiat Lux

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume I [4]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Vampires, Baking, Beach Sex, Blasphemy, Blood Drinking, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Psychotropic Drugs, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 20:11:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4318314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athos arrives back in Greece after a long absence, with Aramis in tow.  The Gods must be propitiated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fiat Lux

**Author's Note:**

> You might ask yourself "Why?" and the answer is "The Muses made us do it."

**Thessaly, 1411**

Sea travel did not agree with Aramis, for if we were to split the elements between us two, he would have been a creature of Earth and Fire. It was no surprise since from Earth he was reborn, and Fire was what he fed on. I, on the other hand, had been a son of Air and Water, in more ways than one.

We took our time traveling by land back to Varna, the city where we first took our tentative steps towards whatever it was we were to become. More than fifteen years hence, which to me felt like a blink of an eye, it was still a jewel upon the Black Sea. It would not be sacked by the Tatars for another three or four years, and as we set sail from Varna towards Greece, I could remember it the way it had been then, for I would not return to it for many centuries.

Fifteen or seventeen years. A blink of an eye, yes, but I don’t think I had ever spent that long in the company of another. My other lovers had all been mortal, defenseless against the ravages of age and nature. But with Aramis, once past the initial terror of not having my love returned, and having settled into a strange stupor once I had known it was, I did not have to fear anymore. Time, disease, violence meant nothing to him as long as he fed his inner demon. He had trusted me enough to tell me how he could be killed, and I had almost returned the favor, at the last moment drawing back, not from a lack of trust but rather for not wanting him to carry that burden. In truth, I never wanted him to bear that weight, to stay with me out of guilt or obligation. With time, I had forgotten that the looming threat even existed, somewhere in my mind becoming complacent, I think. For surely he could no more break my heart than I his.

It was his trust of me which made him follow me aboard that ship to Greece from Varna, and on to the prolonged sea voyage which ensued. I suspect he would have grown to hate me for it, had he not loved me.

“I truly don’t know how you stand it,” he gripped the rail next to me, having staggered back on deck when I had sent Grigoriy to fetch him from below. His skin had looked almost yellow and had he eaten anything, no doubt, he would have been returning that food to the sea whence it came. “Were you conceived at sea?”

I laughed. “Actually, I was.”

“Of course you were.” He looked as if he was making up his mind whether to bite me right then and there. “Care to elaborate? Or no. That’s not part of your character.” He swayed and I caught him into my arms, pressing my lips to his clammy forehead.

“My mother was a priestess at the Temple of Poseidon on Thira,” I whispered, buttressing him with my own body while he attempted to get his sea legs. “My father had um…” I always did laugh when I thought of my father’s wooing shenanigans, if you could call them that. I suppose nowadays you’d just call them sexual assault. “She had been swimming in the sea, close to the sanctuary, and he had turned himself into a dolphin.”

“That’s encroaching on his brother’s territory a bit, isn’t it?” Aramis laughed into my neck.

“My mother was very beautiful.”

“That explains everything,” he pulled back and beamed at me with one of his radiant smiles that usually made my heart drop to my feet. The wind blew his hair into his face and I brushed it back behind his ears. Aramis too was very beautiful. I might have turned into a sea creature myself if that’s what it had taken to claim him, I thought.

“He actually did turn back into a man to… you know,” I felt the need to add. I didn’t want him to think my mother had copulated with an actual dolphin. Like Leda and the swan. I shuddered to think. My mother might have been a virgin, but she had standards. I liked to think I inherited some of them from her.

I could tell this story had amused my beloved greatly for some color was now returning to his cheeks and he tossed his hair back as he laughed, his pearly white teeth flashing in the sunlight over the Aegean.

“I had sent for you to show you something,” I leaned closer to him conspiratorially and pointed towards land.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Mount Athos,” I smirked.

On a clear day from my mountain you could see Olympus, my father’s home. Not his actual home, of course. The Dodekatheon didn’t actually live at the top of the physical mountain, I don’t need to tell you that, you who have the power of Google maps at your disposal. But the celestial plane upon which they reside is, indeed, located right above the apex of Oros Olympos.

“Ah,” Aramis grinned. “Your Ἅγιον Ὄρος?” The Holy Mountain they had called it. Well, holy or not, I had certainly enjoyed my time there, for as long as it lasted. Which, if I knew my chyortik well, he would not fail to bring up. “Your brothel looks lovely from the sea.” And there it was.

“It wasn’t a brothel. I did not pay them.”

He kissed me that way that he did when he wanted to shut me up. Our bark craned and I heard the sails flutter above our heads. We had been close enough to land for seagulls to be swooping wildly over us. I hoped that they would not do what seagulls were most prone to doing: douse us with an outpouring of what in some parts of Eastern Europe they called ‘good fortune.’

“Not even a female farm animal, is what I hear,” Aramis continued, amused.

“I did not want to accidentally trip and fall into a she-goat. Best not to irritate the step-mother.”

He laughed again, his voice caught by the sea waves, and I wondered if the Sirens were still around to covet him and lure us to a rocky death just to get their greedy paws on him. Bringing someone, some _thing_ , like Aramis home to Greece with me would surely offend some god somewhere. It was best then that we kept to my original plan and stopped at Olympus to pay our respects before moving on to our final destination - at Rhodes.

“And where is it?” he asked as if reading my mind, and I knew what he meant immediately, pointing westward towards the peak of Olympus, rising over Thessaly.

“We’ll be in Litochoro soon,” I said. “You will enjoy being on _terra firma_ again, I suspect.”

“Good. We’re running out of servants for me to eat.”

“Well, you’re not eating Grigoriy like you ate Bazyli. Your own servant will have to suffice.”

He pouted, the little monster. It is true, my Grigoriy was aging and I would probably be faced with having to live without him soon until another one came to me. But I wasn’t going to let him die an ignominious death like that.

“I never liked Bazyli that much,” Aramis shrugged. “He didn’t approve of us.”

“No, I didn’t expect you to mourn him as much as I would my familiar.”

“Explain Grigoriy to me,” he said. “Your ridiculous tales comfort me in my time of tribulation.” He sat down on a large ball of rope and fixed me with his most pathetic stare. In all the years we had been together, I had never seen him look so weakened. I pitied the fact that now that we were back in Greece, we would likely travel by sea quite substantially.

I looked out towards Olympus again and started telling him the story of the Watchers.

Zeus, my father, had a predilection for mortals. They beckoned him with their fragility, with their transience. He understood the value of plucking a flower at the very apogee of its bloom, his Ganymedes, his Alcemenes, and my own mother - Eirene - among them.

Little by little, the land was becoming populated with demigod offspring, to the point that Hera and her assassins were having a difficult time keeping up with us. A little viper in the cradle here, a little curse there, and soon my father had begun to catch on to his dear wife’s schemes. He couldn’t be seen to oppose her directly, for even gods have to observe rules of proper breeding and comportment, but he couldn’t simply leave his children that he begot upon mortals unprotected. The children had been innocent. The mothers didn’t necessarily fare as well.

And so, one day Zeus had sent down an army of minor godlings - the Watchers, the Grigori - to protect his demi-divine throng from Hera’s wrath. It is the same Grigori that made their way as Watcher Angels into the monotheistic testaments, although their story had become muddled over the centuries. They did, as the legends say, come down and mate with mortal women; it was the only way to preserve the line of the Grigori. And as long as some demigod or demigoddess spawn of Zeus remained alive, their Grigori would always find them. As a familiar to a witch, they were always there, drawn to us by an unseen hand.

“So…” Aramis was frowning with concentration. “When Grigoriy dies… another Grigoriy will take his place?”

“My Watcher will always find me but in another vessel, and likely a different name. But it will still be the same Grigoriy,” I tried to explain.

“So, they’re all really the same entity?”

“Kind of like your Trinity, yes.”

“Don’t bring the Trinity into this!” He looked like he was about to try actual moralising when another wave caused the ship to crane dangerously to the side and Aramis turned ashen again and declared he was going back below deck. “Just tell me when we’re there,” he grunted.

“Please don’t eat my guardian angel!” I called after him, attempting to hide my laughter with all my might.

***

The sand on the beach at Litochoro felt warm and soft between my toes and sparkled like a pale amber jewel. Unlike the volcanic shores of Santorini, which had been rendered onyx-black and rocky, the bank of the Thermaic Gulf was mild and welcoming. I sank to my knees and let the grains of sand run through my fingers, observing it with a childlike neutrality, as if I was seeing it for the first time. It had been centuries since I had last stood here.

Behind my back, to the West, Oros Olympos rose to its height, piercing the skies with its perfectly arrow-shaped zenith. Could He see me from there now, our Thunderous Father? Did He know that I had returned? Did _She_?

The altars, or what was left of them, would still be there, I assumed. The roads that pilgrims used to take had not been reclaimed by nature, as I had easily ascertained the night before when we had finally come ashore. Grigoriy had wasted no time in securing our lodgings and Aramis declared himself ready to sleep the sleep of death now that the ground beneath his feet was no longer moving. Alas, my poor flittermouse was no stingray of the sea.

“You should drink from me,” I offered, but he shook his head stubbornly.

“You’ll need your strength for the climb,” he protested.

“The climb can wait. You look wretched.” And I felt guilty.

“I’m losing my looks?” he scowled. “Of course, no sooner are we back in Greece than you discover I am suddenly too old for you.”

I wrestled him onto our temporary bed and brought his face into the groove between my neck and shoulder.

“Drink, or I shall have to go get you a human.” For some reason, Aramis detested the idea of me hunting for him. Whatever moral code he lived by, I was yet to discern the full extent of his reasoning, even after all those years spent together. “Come on, then. Let’s feel those fangs, unless the sea birds got them.”

I felt his tongue first, and it made me close my eyes in well-practiced ecstasy.

The next morning, as I sat upon the Aegean shore with the sand grains running through my fingers, he crept upon me as if stalking his prey and tumbled me down as I had him the previous night. The beach was empty, despite the warm weather, and without our armor and the phantom burden of our history from the Slavic lands, we both felt as light as clouds. We lay in the sand, looking upon Helios making his way in the chariot across the sky, and I entwined our fingers and brought his hand to my lips.

“You seem recovered,” I said quietly.

“Have I recovered my looks?” he pressed.

“You have no reason to fear on that account,” I pressed my lips to his hand again and then to his shoulder, where it pressed against my own.

“Forgive me, but sailing past your harem on Mount You made me piquish.”

“That was long before I knew you,” I replied.

“This is your land,” he said, propping his head up with his hand. “These are your gods. I feel… different here.”

“Nothing’s different,” I said and turned my body so that I could throw my leg over his hip and pull him closer.

“You’d better hurry up and propitiate them. I expect a thunderbolt up my arse any moment now.” He gasped as my hand had alighted on the aforementioned arse, squeezing and pulling him closer, so that he could feel the unmistakable rigidity of my groin.

“Adjust your expectations,” I whispered, latching my lips to the taut ligaments of his long, swan-like neck. “The gods can wait,” I growled. “I wish to propitiate my own cock first.”

“You’re a beast,” he laughed but his hand was already freeing me from the confines of my breeches. “Are you certain it isn’t Scylla and Charybdis who are your progenitors?”

I dragged my teeth along his collarbones and bit down until he arched into me. As more of our clothes came off, I forced bruising kisses against his lips, and the sand scraped against my skin and dug into my knees as I straddled him. He looked perfectly debauched underneath me, his lips swollen from my kisses, his hair wildly strewn about like the darkest sea algae. I wanted so much to savage him, right under my ancestors’ disapproving eyes.

“You’re mad,” he laughed again. “Sand will get _everywhere_.”

“Not if I get there first.”

But he had a point, so I dragged him with me along the bank and right into the shallow water before pressing my body on top of his again. The sand was wet and solid there, beneath us, and when the waves came in, they lapped at our legs in a shockingly cool contrast to the rays of the warm sun.

He went lax underneath me, watching with curious eyes as I kissed my way down his abdomen. Another wave snuck up on us, covering us with salt and sea foam and I grinned into the dip of his navel and lapped at the salt water trapped in there.

“Let’s not go to Rhodes,” I whispered. “Let stay here until we’ve fucked so much that we get bored.”

He seemed to contemplate this for a moment, his hand meandering in my newly wettened hair.

“Is there anyone to eat here?” he finally asked.

“I’ll bring you ambrosia,” I promised, and meant it. For Aramis, I would have climbed to the very cloud above Olympus, and down to the Underworld too, if he had preferred asphodel to terrestrial flowers.

“I’ll think about it,” he said and closed his eyes. Another wave swept underneath our bodies and I took him in my mouth, my own arousal forgotten, savoring the way the waters of my native lands seemed to complement his own innate flavor.

Glistening now from the sea, like a nymph himself, Aramis had thrown his head back and arched up to fuck into my mouth. I relished that after so long he still had a way of making me lose my mind from the sheer power of lust. I braced my shoulders against his thighs, keeping him open so that my mouth could do as it pleased, traveling along his length, sucking at the tender skin of his scrotum, swallowing him whole again and again until his breathing became erratic and he moaned my name. I enjoyed keeping him riding that edge for as long as I could, for the sight of him in the throes of passion was its own ambrosia to my senses. I lapped at him, savoring each drop that my attention had forced from his slit without letting him climax, loving the litany of curses that flowed like a waterfall from his beautiful lips. And when I figured I had enjoyed myself enough, I breached him with one of my digits and sucked him down again, to feel him cresting down my throat as I swallowed him.

Wet from the waves and wrecked from his own climax, he lay splayed out before me like a sacrifice worthy of the Olympian gods, while I ran my hands up and down his thighs and watched his chest rise and fall with short breaths. Having looked my fill, I remembered my own cock, which sprung expectedly in between my thighs and appeared to be looking at me askance for forgetting about my own needs. I ran it along the cleft of his exposed ass, loving the way it made him shiver despite having just spent himself. I took myself in hand and quickly brought myself off with a few sure strokes, spilling all over his stomach and his cock that lay there in exhausted repose. His hand reached down to rub my seed into his flesh as he watched my jaw drop in tender awe, and then another wave crested over us and washed the evidence of our communion off his skin.

Eventually, I had the wherewithal to gather up my cloak and roll both our wet bodies onto it. I could already feel my own skin turning olive again from the rays of the sun, reverting to its more natural complexion. Aramis, on the other hand, probably would not do so well, so I had relocated us into the nearest bit of shade.

He purred against me like the kitten I had often accused him of being.

“So, this is how you honor your gods,” he mused.

“Well, Hera prefers cakes,” I replied.

“Cakes?” he sounded scandalized. “You mean for that ritual that you mentioned - if you die - I’ll have to bake Hera _cakes_?”

I had told him about the loophole in Hera's dual curse: since she had bound me in time to immortality, propitiating her and invoking her own curse on my behalf would bring me back from death. It was my first Grigori who explained this to me. My father and I may not have agreed on everything (I, for one, did not share his predilection for taking what was not mine), but I was grateful to him for this.

“Don’t sound so put out. I suppose you could just leave me dead,” I shrugged. I had mentioned all this to him in the past, without ever elaborating on how exactly my death might come about. His aversion to baking would have been amusing if my afterlife and rebirth didn’t, in fact, depend on it.

“Alright, alright,” he huffed. “I’ll make cakes. But can I at least eat them after?”

“Well, no. They’re for Hera. I thought I had explained the whole _propitiating_ aspect of propitiation.”

“So, you’re saying it also has to taste good?”

“Again, if you give her inferior cake, she won’t be properly propitiated!” I could not believe we were having this conversation, and right at the foot of Hera’s home, no less.

Aramis made a small noise, something in between a huff and a whimper. Apparently, he _really_ didn’t want to bake.

“You don’t have to do it yourself, you ass,” I pointed out. “Grigoriy - or _a Grigori_ \- will do it for you. You don’t even have to be there, personally.”

“Of course, I do!” he protested. “I’d want to make sure you come back to life properly, wouldn’t I?”

I opened my mouth to point out that if I died it would most likely be because he couldn’t actually care less whether I was, in fact, alive or dead, but then closed it in favor of kissing him on the nose instead. That seemed to mollify him a bit.

“Cake it is,” he muttered, leaning into me. “But are you sure it actually says _cake_? Perhaps it’s a transcription error? Poor penmanship? Because I could think of another thing to propitiate her with. My _cock_.”

I bit down onto my own fist.

“Yes, thank you very much, my love. That’s my father’s wife you’re talking about.”

“ _You_ seem to like it. And you’re a god. Of sorts.”

I felt a wave of extremely disrespectful laughter about to break forth from my chest. “We’d better get inside, angel, before step-mother gets angry.”

He pulled his shirt back on and scrambled up to follow me. “But we’re baking her cakes! Right? She will enjoy that, surely!”

“Be quiet, Aramis.”

“Are we also killing puppies for Ares?”

Clearly, I was going to have to use extreme measures to gag him. I was looking forward to it.

***

The old gods never die. They lie dormant, like ancient kings sleeping under mountains who will rise at the sound of the bell when their country needs them most. Like Typhon trapped by Zeus’ own bolt. Like the Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa seated at the stone table under the Kyffhäuser hills. Like the Celtic giant Brân the Blessed.

I know that now, having lived for centuries myself. I saw gods fade and new ones emerge, boastful and prideful and convinced of their own invulnerability (for if you are not convinced of your own invulnerability – what kind of god are you?). Some of them suffer the same fate as the Oread Echo, of whom nothing remains but the imprint of somebody else’s voice. Some are lucky, for rather than fading into a faint figment of folk lore, they morph into something new, assume a new name and are venerated by new worshippers.

The God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob had been aware of His own mortality. Why do you think He was so ferocious in his persecution of other gods of the desert? El the Father God. Asherah and Shamash. Marduk and Baal. Powerful gods, gods of the sun and of creation. Goddesses of fertility and of heavens. They had to die so that their blood spilled at the altar of the One God fertilised the faith in the latter. The more worshippers a god accumulates, the more likely he is to last.

He was smart, for He had latched onto the new Messiah, whose power extended beyond the borders of Palestine. It must have taken Him by surprise to suddenly find himself venerated by the Greek, a seafaring people who knew nothing of the desert and to whom the rules prescribed to a desert tribe made no sense. And yet, they accepted them and carried them into the world in the words of the four Evangelists. _En archē ēn ho Logos_. In the beginning was the word. And the word gave rise to the mighty Roman and Byzantine Empires, into which I was born.

I was born into the faith of the One God, the Almighty, the Omniscient, amen. I had no other gods before him. I worshipped no false idols.

I knew other gods existed – how could I not when the proof of their existence slept by my side every night? Yet I knew that my God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, was the One God, the most powerful, the most vengeful, the most warrior-like of all. He was _deus victor_ , He stood where others had fallen. How could you fail to worship a God who had risen from the deity of a small desert tribe to the One God venerated by men who ruled the greatest empires on Earth?

My false idol, who had brought me to the land where my God had defeated his, was frowning at the bundle of herbs in his hand. “Asphodel, myrtle and parsley,” he said, holding them out to me with a gesture that appeared to be almost one of embarrassment and contrition. “We need to chop them and put them in the dough.”

Asphodel, the herb of Hades; myrtle, the herb of love and immortality; parsley, the herb of death and rebirth. “Are you sure about the cake?” I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it. It was all well and good to read about pouring libations and offering sacrifices at the altars of gods, as long as you didn’t think too hard about the mundane details of the sacred rituals. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder at the white goat ruminating serenely in the shade of our tent. White bulls were not so easy to come by these days, and how would we get one up the mountain anyway?

“Let’s slaughter it here,” I said. “And have Grigoriy carry the flesh to the peak.”

“This is not how it works. _Your_ god may be propitiated by symbolic libations with watered-down wine and Eucharist with parchment-thin bread. Whereas Father,” he glanced up to where the Stefani peak of Mount Olympus disappeared in the clouds, “always placed greater demands on his worshippers. As did his wife.”

I know. I bit my own tongue and didn’t speak any of the words that were welling up. The deeper we had ventured into Greece and the more I realised that the legends and myths were true, the more I thought that Athos’ family were, not to put too fine a point on it, a bunch of lunatics. It must have been their never-ending feuds, I mused, as well as the undiluted bloodlines that had made them vulnerable and caused their downfall. For they were almost as bloodthirsty as the One God – even though none of them had, to my knowledge, ordered the slaughter of more than one or two infants at the same time.

Hera. My thoughts had come full circle. Unlike Heracles, Athos had not been an infant when his step-mother’s wrath turned on him. It was Hera who had to be propitiated with a sacrificial cake. Her husband’s tastes were rather more martial and frivolous than that: the slaughter of a white bull (he would have to do with a white goat instead), plus assorted libations.

“How very domestic of her,” I heard myself say.

“She _is_ the Goddess of Family.” Athos shrugged and handed the herbs to Grigoriy, who stood still and silent and pale in the shade of an olive tree.

“And doing a great job.”

Something like a smile flickered in the corners of Athos’ mouth, but it died instantly. He had seemed so much at ease during our voyage (as far as I remembered, for most of it had been a blur), yet there was a restlessness about him now that unsettled me. This was his land. He should be happy here. I wanted him to be happy. And if that meant that I had to make offerings to an extended pagan pantheon, so be it.

Athos brought the flagon of wine, with which he rarely parted these days, to his lips and took a swig. I took it from his unresisting fingers and drank, too, for the heat was making me faint. I seemed to be constantly walking through a haze, where everything around me was soft-edged and foggy. I was perpetually intoxicated by the sun, which made my blood sluggish and dulled my senses. I pulled the hood of my loose linen cloak more deeply over my face. As I moved, the fabric fell open over my breast and my cross, heated from the sun, scorched my skin. I hissed and Athos reached out, lifted the burning metal off my chest and pressed it to his lips.

“You kiss your Anointed when you enter the house of your god, my Roman diablik,” he whispered. “My gods are not satisfied by mere kisses.”

I wasn’t, either, but a kiss was all that he could bestow on me then and there, standing on a terrace halfway up Mount Olympus in broad daylight. Behind Athos’ shoulder, the aquamarine waters of the sea dazzled my eyes and rendered me dizzy.

“But basilisk eggs, Athos?” I murmured against his lips.

“Indispensable ingredients. Have you told your boy yet to fetch them?”

“Why not Grigoriy? He knows what to do, you told me he’s done it before.”

“Grigoriy doesn’t care for snakes.”

We both looked at Grigoriy, whose pallor had assumed a distinctly greenish tinge. His face had aged considerably in the last years, the lines etched into his skin gave him the appearance of a woodcut.

“Neither does Vászoly.” For my part, I didn’t care for losing my groom, who had proved in the few months I had him much more useful than Bazyli had in fifteen years. Or perhaps I was inclined to be more merciful, because he was a compatriot of mine.

“Vászoly is the Hungarian form of Βασίλης,” Athos smirked. “He is, as one may say, predestined for the job.”

I gave a small bow, pressing my hand to my heart as a sign of profound and almost abject respect. “Your reasoning is, as always, flawless. Ever since we’ve come here you’ve been pouring forth pearls of wisdom worthy of your sister Athena.”

“Ah! My only normal sibling. I’m glad there is one member of my family of whom you approve.”

“I approve of anyone who doesn’t require me to propitiate them by trudging up a mountain, baking cakes or slaughtering dumb beasts like a peasant.”

I despatched Vászoly to find a viper’s nest and fetch its eggs. The basilisk, the mythical king of serpents, hatched from a serpent’s egg incubated by a cockerel. Procuring the cockerel had not posed a problem, Grigoriy was used to obeying orders more outlandish than that. Procuring the eggs of a serpent was the true challenge.

It was one to which Vászoly rose beautifully. He returned with a hatful of small brownish eggs even before Athos and I finished our repast, inducing Athos to raise an impressed eyebrow from above his goblet of wine. We were lounging on a blanket spread in the sparse grass of an olive grove that hung between mountains and sea. The setting sun tinted the waves red, and animated Athos’ eyes that gleamed in the dark under the overhanging branches like a cat’s. Hip-tall ferns whispered like living creatures in the gaps between rocks that bordered the terrace. On the hillside, the rocks rose like ridges on the back of the leviathan, growing higher and higher towards the skies, morphing into boulders. Like a majestic dragon stretching its wings, they would eventually become the mountain upon which Athos’ family had resided in divine splendour. Cool air rose from the sea and rolled down the mountains, it rushed between the trees and revived my dull wits.

“Two days of hatching should be sufficient,” Athos said, after Vászoly had placed the serpent’s eggs in a basket, wrestled the struggling cockerel into submission and placed it on top of the eggs, stroking the belligerent bird until it unruffled its feathers and went to sleep. “Will you be ready to climb to the top of Olympos in two days time, or would you,” he hesitated barely perceptibly, “prefer to wait here. You don’t have to come.”

I smirked. The endless depths of the indigo-black night sky above my head gave me an idea of what eternity was like. It was exhilarating. “Seventeen years ago,” I said, “you asked me to come with you. Have you ever regretted it?”

“Never.” Athos had gone very still. His elegant hand lay flat on the ground, not touching mine, yet I sensed its warmth tingle at my fingertips. “Never, Aramis.”

I leaned in and grazed a nail across his knuckle. “Ask me again.”

***

“I’ll chop the mandrake and belladonna, you do the herbs.” If I was going to perform the duties of a kitchen wench, I would at least make sure to handle the interesting ingredients.

We had made the olive grove our home as we waited two days for the cockerel to carry out the task assigned to him. Grigoriy devoted one of those days to building a makeshift kiln, using flat stones from the bed of the stream that had carved its way through the rock. That night, just after cock-crow, Athos cracked one egg open: the snakeling inside had not begun to hatch yet, the egg white dribbled out and trickled to the ground, where it was licked up by the goat. Athos and I had spent the afternoon by a chaste-tree, rubbing the berries gently off their stems. I confess the temptation to curse my idol’s pagan tribe had been great then, but Athos, in his turn, propitiated me by crouching on his hands and knees before me. We may have used a good portion of the olive oil designated for his father in the process, but Athos assured me that the Cloud Gatherer would have deemed it a worthy cause.

“Very well. We have everything we need.” Athos made a sign at Grigoriy, who rummaged for the flour pouch in the saddle bags our goat was carrying up the mountain. I felt something brush against my leg and saw the goat, sneakily stealing herbs that were meant to appease the Goddess of Marriage.

“What about goat milk?” I suggested. “It may make the cake more succulent. I’m sure your mother would like it.”

“She’s my step-mother,” Athos said calmly. “And it’s a he-goat.”

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“We are not putting _his_ milk in the cake, Aramis.”

“I thought your family liked that sort of thing.”

Grigoriy grabbed the cockerel, stuck it under his arm and hurried out of sight. We heard the bird put on a vociferous fight, until the sound of a swooshing axe put an end to his worldly struggles. “I’ve been looking forward to roast chicken for days,” Athos observed.

I grimaced. “How can you think of food in this heat. I don’t believe I can swallow anything roasted.”

“You’ll be glad of cold chicken tomorrow. The pilgrimage to the Throne of Zeus will take another night.” Athos caught my eye and I could’ve sworn I saw him blush. “Are you still sure-”

“Athos!”

I watched Athos pour the flour and eggs into an earthen bowl decorated with what he referred to as ‘charming scenes of rural pleasures’ and in which the god Pan played a pivotal role. He stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon with an expression of such concentration on his face that I couldn’t help myself.

“You’re laughing, Aramis,” he growled, glaring at me from beneath lowered brows.

“Out of habit, I assure you.” My shoulders were shaking so hard as I tried to suppress my mirth that my hand slipped and the knife I used for cutting up belladonna berries pierced my skin. “Ouch!”

Athos seized my hand and carried it to his lips. A drop of blood ran down my finger and dripped into the bowl.

“Sorry!” For a moment, my heart fluttered and I sobered up again. “Is it ruined?”

“The blood of a revenant…” Athos said thoughtfully around my finger in his mouth. “It may improve the quality.”

I looked him in the eye. “Get on with it, then.”

Athos smirked and his tongue slithered around my knuckles like an obscene tentacle. “Not now. We’ve got a cake to bake.”

Laughter burst from my lungs, and I leaned in to kiss him. He was laughing too, his breath hot in my mouth. “I feel,” I muttered at last, “that if we can master this challenge, we can master everything.”

I poured asphodel honey into the bowl as Athos stirred. Once the mixture turned into a smooth dough, we added the chopped herbs and berries. The honey made it smell delicious, and I scooped up some and carried it to my lips.

“It’s… not bad.” I tried some more. “You should taste it. Do you think the Governor’s lady wife will approve?”

“It’s not quite ambrosia,” Athos said, licking and nibbling dough off his fingers in a way that made my thoughts take a considerably undomestic turn. “But it will have to do.” He lunged quite suddenly, but I had anticipated him and had braced myself for the impact. His tongue in my mouth was replaced by fingers probing between my lips, lathering my tongue with honey-sweet dough. I swallowed it and dipped my own fingers into the bowl.

“Are you attempting to propitiate me?” I was laughing again, lightheaded with heat, wine and the taste of him. “I assure you I’m feeling quite docile.”

“I’ve noticed,” Athos had tackled me to the ground and was sucking my fingers in, one after another. “I’ve never seen you this meek. Are you sure you’re quite well?” His words were light as air, but there was a note to his voice that plucked at my heartstrings.

“I’m drunk,” I admitted in the same playful tone. “It’s that infernal Greek wine you’ve been pouring down your throat and mine. I’ve been drunk for days.”

“Would you like to sleep it off?” he whispered hotly with his honey mouth into the side of my neck. “Let me take you to the tent.”

“Fie, devious fiend!” I wriggled out of his grasp, like St. Anthony shaking off the temptations that were put in his path in the Egyptian desert. “I have dragged myself halfway up this holy mountain of yours in a daze, as my senses clouded over more and more by the hour. Do not let my sacrifice go to waste, I beg of you.”

He let go of me instantly. “Forgive me, my love,” he said, quite earnestly.

I put my arms around his neck and kissed that mouth that I so loved. “You are forgiven. Now, let’s shove this delicacy into the kiln and _then_ ,” I kissed him again, “take me to the tent.”

We sprinkled the cake with poppy seeds. Hera, we agreed, would appreciate the gesture.

***

And there was evening and there was morning – the fourth day.

We waded hip-deep through ferns. The morning was chilly and dew clung heavily to leaves and grass blades. My linen cloak soaked through, and I shivered; yet I relished the cold, for I knew that the sun’s full glare would hit us soon, and I lifted my eyes towards the celestial vault that hung high above our heads and drank deeply from the canteen I carried on my belt. The wine was warm and sweet and coated my tongue with a sheen of honey. We clambered over a plateau of rubble, over terraces formed by large rocks. Amidst them: blackberry boscages, silver-leafed nightshades and dwarfish pines. My gaze fixed on Athos’ back; the glare of his white tunic hurt my eyes and made my head spin, but I didn’t dare let go of it. Beneath me, stones and grass moved like waves of the sea, rustling under my feet and rolling down, down, down, and my soul rose up, up, up, towards air, towards the sky, towards gods that were not mine. I looked down and saw myself slipping sideways.

I stumbled and blinked. We stood on a tall crest. The mountain ridge arched towards the peak, curving above a huge boulder-rimmed cauldron. Below it, a river cascaded down over flat, steep rocks. Silence rang in our ears. The air stood still and heat poured down from the sky. The midday sun curdled the world around us; everything stopped. The only moving things were the shadows of clouds gliding over the silvery rocks and green-grey slopes like biblical monsters locked in a deadly chase. Lizards clung to rocks like precious stones to a bishop’s dalmatic.

Athos turned towards me and wiped his forehead with his forearm. His smile trembled and faded when he caught sight of my face. “Aramis.” I saw his lips form my name, but there was silence. I blinked again and stepped to the edge. The abyss smiled up at me, baring its teeth in a wide grin that showed me a lake suspended between heaven and earth. Its waters foamed where the gushing river hit them, boiling like the devil’s own cauldron, like green glass shattering against stone.

“Aramis.” Athos’ fingers around my arm. He was pulling me away and I slumped into his arms, mouthing at the sweat-drenched skin of his neck where his blood called out to me.

“Let me drink from you.” My fingers scrambled to find the grooves between his ribs underneath the fabric of his tunic. My tongue lapped at the distended vein under the olive skin.

Athos quivered and his chest heaved with a shuddering breath. The arms around me tightened. “Not now,” he muttered in my ear. It was the first time that I asked and he refused. My mouth clamped down on the patch of skin that separated me from divine nectar. He tensed against me but didn’t pull back, didn’t push me back, only his heartbeat quickened. His pulse was racing against my tongue, against my teeth, each throb a short stab that darted straight to my brain, pushing through the fog.

“Let me drink.” My arms around him tensed, my muscles hard as bone, yet unbreakable. I grazed his skin with the tips of my fangs and his body jolted into mine. My eyes were open wide, but all I saw was darkness. The white of his tunic had turned to black, the sun-soaked landscape around us had turned to grey. In this world of light, I was blind, like a man who had stared into the flame of a candle too long. His blood, his blood, it was the only thing I could cling to. Once I drank it, the darkness inside my head would disperse. “Let me _drink_!”

“Aramis!” I heard his voice this time. I felt his body, the familiar hard lines and planes, the velvety skin. My hands were scrabbling beneath his tunic. I was clawing at him as I’d clawed at the soil of my grave when I’d broken free. I needed air. Was he stronger than me? His strength was an eternal ebb and flow. “Aramis, let go.”

His voice penetrated through the darkness in my head. I pulled off my mouth from where it had been sucking at his flesh. There was a bruise blossoming already, I could sense it, I could sense the fine droplets of blood gather and dissipate in his skin.

He kissed me, and I tasted wine and honey on his lips. “Not now, my love,” he murmured in-between long, deep kisses that reached all the way down into my souls. “I can’t let you drink now, not before-”

“Please.” I opened my mouth to his, willing to devour as much of his flavour as I could.

“I can’t.” The pained groan surged through my lips straight to my heart. Athos sank down to his knees and pressed his mouth into the hollow above my hip, soaking the linen of my cloak with his frantic breaths.

I threw my head back and opened my eyes against the glaring brightness of the black sun. Clouds rushed from behind the peak, tilting the world off-kilter, and I was falling backwards even as I stood still. Athos’ hands on my hips, Athos’ mouth on my stomach, my groin, nudging my cock through the linen and I clutched his hair. “Let’s do it,” I said and lowered my head again. His face swam into view, his dark eyes clinging to mine. I took his hand and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s find that fucking goat.”

Our servants had climbed to the Throne of Zeus yesterday, while Athos and I waited for the cake. They had set up our tent in a nook tucked into the sheer wall and descended the mountain again, for Athos did not wish them to partake in the ritual. The goat was waiting for us, and it bleated when it saw us approach. I slumped down in the shade by the tent and carried my canteen to my lips, but it was empty. Athos ducked into the tent and returned with a full flagon. I gulped down half of its contents in one go, coughed, and gave it back to Athos, who emptied it and collapsed against my side. I weaved my fingers through his damp hair. “Kill that fucking beast already.” I swallowed around a tight throat. “I need-”

“I know,” he said and took my free hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. I’m here. I chose to. But now I really, really need to-” I swallowed again. “Blood. I need blood.”

We both moved our heads at the same time, and I knew his gaze alighted on the same target as mine. The goat was right there, within reach. I had never drunk animal blood, but I knew that there were those of my kind who did.

“Aramis. No.” Athos squeezed my hand. He was shaking his head. “You don’t have to do that. It won’t take long, and then you can have me.” He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. “Please wait for me.”

I closed my eyes and fell back against the stone wall. “It’s so sweet,” I said. “Your blood. You have no idea, Athos, no idea. Its sweetness is… It’s ambrosia. To me, it’s ambrosia.”

“I’ll bring you ambrosia,” he said, repeating the promise he’d given me that day on the beach. “For now,” he pulled the sacrificial cake from the bag that he’d carried up the mountain. “Would that do?”

“This is for propitiating Hera,” I said.

“Fuck Hera,” he swore filthily. “Propitiating you is a more pressing concern at present.” He cut off a generous slice and handed it to me. I sank my fangs greedily into the honey-sweet flesh. I fancied I could discern the flavour of my own blood under the layers of herbs and berries.

“Did you just tell me to fornicate with your father’s wife?”

Athos, who had also bitten into a slice of cake, choked and glowered at me. “Don’t even think of it.”

“One never knows with your family,” I said thoughtfully. “Is there any more wine?”

Athos reached into the tent and fetched two flagons; he handed me one. “Stay here,” he said eventually, swallowed a mouthful of wine and rose to his feet, swaying like reed. “I shall perform the sacrifice.”

“I’ll help.” I stood and braced myself against the wall. The world spun around me. Shadows shimmered into view and faded again. The grass beneath my feet billowed in viridian waves. We waded through them towards the white patch of fur, which bleated as we approached. A ray of sun hit the knife in Athos’ hand and pierced my eye. _And I looked and lo! a lamb stood on the mount Zion._

A _goat_. It was a goat, not a lamb, _and the Son of Man would harvest-_

Athos was not the Son of Man. He was the Son of God, of mortal woman born, _having his Father’s name written in his forehead._

_These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins-_

I began to laugh. Through the laughter and the bleating of the goat; through the fog and the blazing darkness, I heard him speak, and I spoke also. “A virgin, Athos?” Still laughing, I let go of the horns of the goat and took his face between my hands. “Tell me, truly: have you ever been defiled with a woman?”

Athos was laughing too, his wine-soaked breath settled on my lips like vapour.

“ _The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation,_ ” I whispered into his kisses. “Are you wrathful, my godling? Does it make you angry that you have to butcher a beast like a peasant to appease the breathless dead?”

“They live, Aramis,” he whispered back. “They haven’t died. They never die.”

“Like yourself?” I was kissing him with open-mouthed abandonment, pressing him into the stone altar with the full weight of my body. “You will never die, Athos, will you?”

“Not if-” He bit my lip.

“If what? Tell me.”

“You will never see me die.” He kissed me again. “I promise you that.”

Words. Words to reassure me. He was wrapping words around a wine-soaked tongue as I was wrapping myself around his body. He threw his arms open and the knife in his hand suddenly resembled a sword. I blinked; Athos face was _full of eyes round about_. His body hot under my hands as I tore his tunic off him, don’t get blood on it. He was my Seraph, my Burning One, and he was my Cherub with the sword in his hand. He pushed me back with a hand against my chest. “Now. Aramis.”

I grabbed the goat by the horns. In the next moment, the odour of blood hit my nostrils and drenched my tongue. Athos pulled the knife back and staggered back onto the soiled altar. I was above him in a flash. He was staring up at me with stars behind his eyes. “Take it!” The pained groan shot to my loins. He was naked before me, gripping the edge of the altar with one hand; clutching the handle of the knife with the other. The scent of his sweat and his arousal, the scent of the potion that boiled in his veins mingled with the blood of the dumb beast, with olive oil that spilled beneath us and was dripping to the ground where it mingled with blood, and with the honey-herbal aroma of Hera’s sacrifice. All that remained of the cake was smeared over the altar and Athos’ skin, and I leaned in and scraped a mouthful off his arm with my teeth.

He pulled me down and sucked at my tongue. “ _Aramis_.” He was guiding my head to where shoulder curved into neck, but I pulled free and slid my mouth along the line of his collarbone, dipped into his armpit and dragged both rows of teeth down the length of his arm. Kneeling by his ribcage, I was crouched above him, across him, and I curled one hand around his shoulder. My thumb rested against the pulse point in his armpit, I pinned his wrist down with my other hand, and I watched. I watched the vein in the crook of his elbow swell, watched the engorged vessel pulsate like a living organism, calling out to me. Athos’ entire arm was throbbing with trapped blood, and I swooped down and licked the vein slowly, tantalisingly, until it throbbed against my lips. I latched onto his flesh, piercing it carefully in one spot, and I caught the blood that spurted forth as if from a spring.

Athos flew off the altar. His chest slid slickly against mine and I pressed down on him. Blood surged through his body. It surged to his lips which parted in a greedy groan; it surged to his groin, where his cock stood ramrod hard, awaiting me; it surged into my mouth, pumping me full with liquid life.

A slick finger slithered between my legs and into the cleft of my arse, probing gently until it found the right spot. He pushed in. Stopped. Pushed in deeper, bringing the lust that simmered in my abdomen and loins to boiling point. No longer content with nestling peacefully against his skin, my cock jumped forth, trailing my hips in its wake. I thrust my groin into the slippery curve of his ribs, panting. Athos groaned throatily; his entire body vibrated like that of a purring cat. He was fucking me with his fingers in deep, steady strokes. “So good,” he sighed, and I hummed in response, unwilling to lift my mouth off that source of liquid light that he so generously submitted to me. “Aramis. I want to-” The angle changed, there was more friction, more heft. Something more substantial than Athos’ fingers was digging into me, spreading me open, as Athos moved behind me and fucked himself into my arse.

But no. Athos was spread beneath me, and his cock – I cast a quick glance at his groin – was in its place. It had not moved – disembodied – behind me, like a perverse pagan equivalent of the Holy Spirit. Was there someone else fucking me? I groaned at the thought and arched my back in spite of myself. Had Athos’ father descended the celestial plane, invoked by the gifts that his son had brought and destroyed? Had the God of Thunder assumed a corporeal form after centuries of repose in the domain of spirits, to lay claim to the pretty revenant whom his son had proffered at his altar?

***

Did my arms sprout tentacles? Did my shoulder blades sprout wings? Did we lie in a forest surrounded by a roundelay of the Raving Ones, or is my ravening darling himself turned half-maenad from my wine?

Above me the sky had opened up, a gaping cerulean orifice that threatened to swallow me whole. Beneath me, the rock we lay on, the blood-and-oil-splattered altar, felt as soft and malleable as sand. We shouldn’t have tasted of step-mother’s offering. I cannot be killed by water, by fire, by poison, but the elements my body is made of are still of this - human - world. I could feel it in my bloodstream: the potent mixture of the mandrake and belladonna. The asphodel honey. Did revenants feel it too?

As the Olympian gates slid open above my head, my eyes drifted back to Aramis’ face. His eyes were closed in ecstasy and his blood-tinted lips were parted in a moan that seemed stolen by the thin Olympian air. I had brought him here, against all reason, and here I would have him. Let the Dodekatheon watch and learn. I haven’t woken them for nothing.

“Aramis,” my hand grabbed onto my beloved’s lush hair, “Stay with me.” I pulled him down from whatever Olympus he had scaled inside his own mind, and if the wily grin on his lips could speak volumes, then it whispered to me of words I longed to hear.

“Always. I will never leave you.”

Had he spoken those words aloud or did I only hear them with my body? The altar beneath me appeared to solidify again, and I leveraged my weight off it, bringing him crashing down beneath me instead, trapping him there with my body, groin pressed against groin. His head lolled from side to side, like a willow swaying in the wind, his eyes were at half mast, his lips parted in an evocative invitation, one I could not decline. He tasted of asphodel honey, and more - how strange - a hint of ambrosia, as if it had poured forth from the celestial atrium above our heads.

I entered him quickly, our bodies already lax and pliant from the spilled olive oil offerings and the intoxicants inside our shared blood. He already had my blood inside him, which filled me with exhilaration as always, but I wanted to fill all of him. Because I could have him. Because he was mine. And I, a wandering, petulant child, who brings his beloved home and secretly hopes his parents will not approve? I laughed into the languid curve of his neck as I fucked him. _This_ was the result of Hera’s curse, and _this_ I would throw upon the altar at her feet. I took my time, taking him apart on that ancient slab, with my hands, with my lips, with my cock, until he begged me for his release, until his lips parted around a moan so loud as to wake up the Titans in Tartarus.

He lay underneath me, our legs entwined just as our fingers, our hands somewhere high above our heads, his eyes shut in imitation of sleep, but his body strummed beneath me with keen alertness. I kissed the shallow cleft of his chin and thought of the heart-shape of his entire visage, how perfectly he had been formed by whatever hand had made him.

And then, the air around us shifted.

“Athos,” I heard behind me and we both stirred off the profaned altar. “Father sends greetings and gratitude.”

“Hermes,” I rubbed my eyes to make sure of who was standing before me. But having taken in his entire ensemble - the hat, the cape, the talaria, oh, and nothing else - there was no mistaking our visitor for another Olympian. “Hello, brother.” I shot a glare at Aramis, just in case, to forestall any commentary. “Not a word,” I hissed.

“I wasn’t going to…” He trailed off, but I could see his eyes taking in our wing-footed messenger.

“Pretty revenant. Father wants to know if he may borrow.”

Now, that got a scandalous gasp out of my lover and I rose from the altar, placing my body in between Hermes and my own Hyacinthus, wary lest another war break out among the Olympian throng over his beauty. The celestial vagina still gaped menacingly above my head.

“Tell Father he most definitely _may not_.”

“Father does not need your permission. He takes what he wants,” said the guide to the Underworld.

“Let him try. I eat eagles for breakfast these days.”

“He will be disappointed. And after you’ve been away for so long. Your Mount’s gone to piss, you know!”

“Tell Zeus to smite it then, for all I care, if it brings such shame upon the family.”

Behind me, Aramis giggled. Perhaps he had gone half-maenad after all. I almost wanted to check under the tunic, but then remembered he wasn’t wearing one anymore.

“You won’t be sailing from Litochoro at all if you don’t reach deep inside and find that feeling of generosity we all remember so fondly.” My brother flung his cape in a jaunty way about his shoulder, meanwhile, his prick remained utterly on display. For the first time in a long time, I realized Aramis may have been right about my family. They were… _unique_.

“They can have anything else, but not _this_.” Surely, had I not been already in the utmost Greek Pantheon nude, I would’ve rend my shirt for emphasis. My head spun. For Aramis, I would have fought the entire Pantheon, and the Old Ones too. I looked about for the sacrificial knife, more out of instinct than any real sense. It would not harm the Argus-slayer.

“But _this_ is very lovely,” Hermes strutted right up to Aramis and reached out as if to touch his face. I intercepted his wrist, which glowed like burnished gold in my grip, and held it tightly. “It’s new and different. And we want it.”

“Don’t make me fight you,” I growled. “If memory serves, you’re not exactly Herakles.”

“Oh, do go on!” Aramis exclaimed, reclining on the bloody altar as if he were in a fashionable salon and my unfolding family drama was all a play staged for his entertainment. “This Greek God stuff is all so… _savage_.” His hand trailed down to his own cock, which appeared to be approving of the proceedings.

The Ram-Bearer, in the meantime, had slithered out of my hold and taken a step back, his eyes narrowed upon me in insolent amusement.

“Speaking of Herakles…”

I groaned. If Father’s idea was going to entail us performing ridiculous labors for his amusement, I was going to have to disappoint him. Unless, of course, the labors involved us being engaged in some kind of acrobatic and intense marathon of copulation. In which case, I could be swayed. I looked up at the orifice above our heads again and could almost make out a familiar giggle. Did Eris spread her black wings and look down upon me? Sing me, oh Muse, of how profoundly _fucked_ I am.

“We all do wish you’d come visit more often, not only at resurrection hour. Well, you know what a nag Hestia can be, and Apollo does say you’ve always had the best _eromenoi_.” He did seem almost sincerely peeved, good old Hermes.

“How are they?” I finally spoke. It was only polite to ask, after all my seeming impertinence.

“Bored. Horny. Some are comatose. But Ares has been busy.”

“Ares is always busy.” I knew because I kept him busy quite often myself, starting wars and such. Usually by accident or out of sheer delight. Like the last time, when I told Jogaila to back the Samogitians against the Teutons. Who would have thought those cross-bearing hypocrites would have gone to war over a shithole like Samogitia!

“How’s Discordia?” Aramis crowed from his roost.

“You… I’ll… gag you!” I waved a threatening finger towards him.

“What does the revenant say?”

“He says nothing, or at least nothing henceforth.”

“I _like_ the sound of her Latin name - _Discordia_ ,” Aramis mewled. “Don’t you find it’s more accurate?”

Aramis was staring into the aperture of Olympus now, too. And then he winked at it. I realized I should not have given him all that wine. Or cake. Or brought him up here to begin with. This was a terrible idea, really, one of my worst. And I once thought to run a Christian monastic community as a source of steady bedmates!

“Her name is _Eris_!” I snapped. “It rhymes with Aramis!”

I probably should not have said that, but somehow it only bothered him enough to turn his head towards me and flash his fangs. I had expected more of an outburst. He really had gone docile from the Aegean sun and the sedatives.

“Aramis? Is that what you call it?” My wing-footed brother leered. I was about to protest his repetitive, offensive pronoun usage when Aramis erupted again.

“Is _that_ why you’ve always liked my name?” my beloved purred, but I could hear the lion’s roar behind the kittenish purring. "I should have known something perverse was behind it, you eternal deviant."

“Eris is well,” Hermes spoke, ignoring my beloved for the time being. “So is Athena. She sends her regards.”

“Who?”

“Athena.”

“His one normal sibling,” Aramis giggled again, clearly not heeding my desire for him to turn into Grigoriy and mute himself.

“Eris is also normal,” Hermes appeared to take umbrage on Discord’s behalf.

“Wait,” Aramis perked up. “Oh _hell_. Discordia is your sister? You never told me you fucked your sister! That’s rather degenerate, even for you!”

“In his defense,” Hermes suddenly interjected, “It would be difficult to fuck a goddess in Hellas who is not technically his sister. Or a niece."

“Please, do not defend me,” I said, wryly.

This time, without a shred of doubt, I could hear the distinctive giggle from on high and a shower of black feathers descended upon us. Definitely the worst idea I have ever had.

“You two should stay,” the Patron of Thieves spoke.

“No,” I shook my head.

“You say that as if you have a choice,” said the amoral one.

“I have a choice. We can leave unimpeded right now, or I can punch you in the face. Now, I suspect you would not much enjoy the second option.”

For a deity known for his flawless rhetoric and the powers of persuasion, I was amazed to see Hermes unmoved to elocution.

Something boiled up above our heads, a burst of electricity and the smell of ozone. I looked skyward to watch the watery blues of the atrium turn bruise-purple and then pitch black. The firmament itself had turned pure onyx, and I was blinded by the diamonds of stars that appeared to burst into a layer of my mind that Olympus had laid bare before the heavens. I felt Hermes' swift fingers brush against my brow and then I shuddered.

I was cold. And wet. And prone. A thick mist had gathered around me like a blanket. I groaned and moved my stiffened limbs and then I collided with a body next to mine. I turned my head and our eyes met. Aramis yawned.

“When did we fall asleep?” I asked.

“Probably after you fucked me silly,” he shrugged and sniffed the air. “It’s late. Should we descend?”

***

The path downwards into the mortal realm felt simultaneously easier and longer. Without the added burden of our sacrificial offerings, we made our descent expeditiously and steadily, our minds no longer clouded by the atmospheric pressure or the herbs of propitiation. Yet each crevice, each bend in the path, each rock seemed somehow transmuted, transformed. I felt suspended in time and space, between the Throne of Zeus and the shore of the Thermaic Gulf which sparkled in the moonlight beneath us.

How long did we sleep? Neither one of us seemed certain. Neither remembered dreaming, either. My lips still held that phantom taste of ambrosia and asphodel. Which one of them, if any, had been real, or merely a figment brought about by our formerly mortal coils’ throes against our immortality?

Almost at the meeting point where we were to reconvene with Grigoriy and Vászoly, I reached out and took Aramis’ hand.

“Are you…”

“Yes?” He pressed up against me with the same ease and familiarity as before the ascent. I recalled how much he’d had to endure for me and my heart palpitated like a hummingbird trapped inside my chest.

“You’re all right?” I asked.

“I’m in one piece,” he smiled and his pearlescent teeth lit up the night again. “And I’m still yours. Are you?”

I pressed my lips to his in a silent vow. “My flittermouse,” I whispered as my forehead pressed against his. His fingers at the small of my back pulled me in and held me in place and I felt that displacement of time ebb away as I became grounded in his embrace. “Forever,” I said.

Grigoriy greeted us below, seemingly more gargoyle-like than ever before, as if he had encountered Medusa on his wait and it had turned him to stone. He rose and handed a flagon to each one of us. I brought it to my lips and was relieved to discover it had been filled with spring water.

“Where is Vászoly?” Aramis enquired, casting a bewildered look around.

Grigoriy shrugged and pointed at the celestial canopy, presumably to indicate that Gods alone must know.

“How strange,” I muttered.

“I have the worst luck with servants,” Aramis pronounced somberly. “How do I get a Grigori of my own?”

“You have to be a son of Zeus,” I explained.

“Can I be a son of Zeus by marriage?”

“I suppose, if you married a daughter of Zeus.” He hit me and I laughed and pulled him tightly against me. “Thank you for doing that with me.”

“Oh. Oh no. The pleasure was all mine,” he muttered into my neck and I felt the sharp points of his fangs resting gently against my ligaments. “All mine.”

 

 


End file.
